A battle flag that traveled to Iowa with a Union soldier at the end of the Civil War will soon be taking a $75,000 trip home to South Carolina.

The red palmetto flag — believed to be the one that flew over Morris Island on Jan. 9, 1861, when a battery of Citadel cadets fired on the supply ship Star of the West — will require special and expensive care, said Ted Curtis, a 1964 Citadel graduate and chairman of an alumni committee that researched the flag’s authenticity.